Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle startup, announced the opening of a new engineering and development office in Los Angeles. It marks the sixth of such facilities for the fast-growing company, which is actively hiring for dozens of roles in its native Pittsburgh as well as in Austin, Texas; Miami, Florida; and Seattle, Washington, in addition to its new office in LA. Argo is also hiring in Munich, Germany, where its European engineering headquarters is based.
As part of the LA expansion, Argo announced that Yisong Yue, a professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology, will help lead the new office as its principal scientist. Yue's work at Caltech has involved innovative research in AI and sequential decision making, research he'll likely apply alongside his other expertise as part of Argo's AV forecasting and motion planning work. Additionally, he'll help support the development of the Argo Self-Driving System by looking to refine the technology's ability to predict the anticipated paths of other road users and to then plan its safe trajectory accordingly.
"Building a stronger relationship between academia and industry helps unlock new ways for advanced research to inspire innovations in the field of autonomous vehicles," Yue said in a statement. "I’m looking forward to working with Argo in order to translate the latest advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning into best practices to support new frontiers in autonomous vehicles."
Rod Kurihara also joins the company as part of the expansion to LA as a director of software engineering. He previously led the development of advanced ride control systems as a studio executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. While working at Argo, Kurihara will guide functional safety, especially as it relates to diagnostics and fault management infrastructure, as Argo seeks to ensure its robotic control systems are safe for use.
"Our affiliations with world-class academics are integral to taking robotics research and delivering real-world impact," Brett Browning, Argo's chief technology officer and executive vice president of product development, said in a statement. "Our work with Dr. Yue and Kurihara, combined with the strong engineering team rapidly growing in LA, will push the entire field forward, while supporting Argo’s goal to develop and deploy safe autonomous vehicles that benefit people around the world."
Argo's latest collaboration with those who are working in globally recognized academic institutions follows that of similar efforts it's made with those at Carnegie Mellon University as well as with the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Munich.
Argo employs over 1,500 workers globally, 500 of whom are based in the Pittsburgh region. Argo CEO Bryan Salesky and President Peter Rander founded the company in 2016.
